Head Shots | davem photography

Time to catch up again. Had a couple shoots that didn't happen. I was trying to schedule a shoot with a model, but ran out of time. She was only in town for a short amount of time before flying back to California. Hopefully, I'll work with her when she's back in August. I've also been busy training for my triathlon and shot some images from a triathlon in Macon. More on those in a later post.

Recently, I was contacted to shoot some head shots. Tom LaForge is the Global Director of Human & Cultural Insights for The Coca-Cola Company. He does a lot of public speaking and was in need of updated head shots.

I was honored to be contacted by Tom. We spoke on the phone and he informed me that he did a Google search, viewed several portfolios and selected mine, since he liked my style. I'm not sure how many portfolios he went through, but when I last checked I was on page 5 when searching for "Atlanta Portrait Photographers". Needless to say, I was going to make sure he was going to be happy with his head shots.

I met Tom at his home in Buckhead and we shot in his backyard. I used my DIY Beauty Dish and 70-200mm f/2.8.

This is the first time I shot someone wearing glasses and I know that reflection from the light can be an issue. It was easy to adjust by moving the angle of the light and the subject slightly to avoid that reflection, so no problem. I also used a trick to create a more natural and relaxed pose.  I ask the subject to look away, I'll count down and then have him turn to the camera. I also positioned Tom so that the little bit of sunlight coming through the trees would work as a nice hair/rim light.

Since we were shooting outdoors I didn't bring any backdrops, but Tom asked if I could shoot something over a white background. I walked around the house and didn't see a solid colored and we couldn't shoot inside since his wife had client meetings going on. I improvised and pulled out my 42" reflector/scrim and mounted it to a light stand and created a white background. I also switched to my 28" Apollo soft box as I wanted to keep light from falling onto the background.

Here's what I came up with.

Once we were done, Tom asked his wife to come out for a quick couple shot.

Below is the setup shot over the white background.


The reflector was a quick idea that worked out well, however it did require some work in photoshop. The reflector was not large enough and I had to extend it to fill the frame. I also had to dodge the background to make it pure white. Still works and it looks like it may have been shot in a studio.

Like I said earlier in the post, Tom spent quite a bit of time searching for someone to take his headshot and finally chose me. I was going to go out of my way to deliver results. I think I did just that.

If you're looking for a portrait photographer in the Atlanta area, visit my portfolio.